What Will the Left Do If Bibi Loses?

“You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore,” the future American president said in 1962 upon losing California’s gubernatorial election. We’re thinking of that line on the eve of Israel’s election. Democrats, Europeans, and other detractors of the Jewish state turn their ire on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. These critics are likely to be disappointed, though, if Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition loses its majority on October 27. Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, in an election debate last week, said that strong American-Israeli ties are “not possible right now, with the Netanyahu government in charge.” Leaders at London, Paris, and Turtle Bay sound as if the only impediment to world peace is a man nicknamed “Bibi.” Pushing a resolution to end America’s military cooperation with Israel, Senator Bernie Sanders vows “not another nickel for Netanyahu’s war machine.” Such statements are often based on a cartoonish assumption that the current Israeli government prefers endless belligerence to living in peace with its neighbors. What these critics ignore is an observation made recently, albeit in a different context, by Secretary of State Marco Rubio: “War did not disappear simply because we preferred peace.” The Jewish state, for one, has been threatened with annihilation since its founding and to this day. No wonder Mr. Netanyahu’s top competitors on the hustings are tough warriors, led by a former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, Gadi Eisenkot. At the left flank of the four-party bloc vying to topple Mr. Netanyahu is the Democrats, led by a former IDF general, Yair Golan. As Israel is likely to remain on war footing, the army lacks 12,000 new recruits. Far from shrinking the “war machine,” the opposition’s top election issue is expanding the draft.The harshest foreign critics of Mr. Netnayhu’s policies hone in on policies they claim impede peace with the Palestinian Arabs. These policies “make the two-state solution unviable,” Britain’s foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, argued at Parliament last month while announcing sanctions on Israel. Yet no top opposition leader advocates a Palestinian state. While the words “two states” ring loud at Turtle Bay and beyond, they’re scoffed at in Israel. The leader of the opposition Israel Our Home party, Avigdor Liberman, recently unveiled a new policy paper advocating a repeal of the Oslo Accords that created the Palestinian Authority. Mr. Liberman is known as a hawk, but his would-be partners also push back against Mr. Netanyahu’s claim that only his leadership can prevent a Palestinian state. Such a state “won’t be created under our future government,” Mr. Eisenkot said recently. Mr. Netanyahu’s political opponents claim they can improve relations with Israel’s critics abroad. Malarkey. Since the October 7 massacre even leftists who have long supported statehood for the Palestinian Arabs are now iffy about the prospect. “Two states for two peoples is a vision that could take at least 100 years to materialize, if it can happen at all,” the Democrats’ Mr. Golan said last month. Mr. Eisenkot has argued that building tenders in the outskirts of Jerusalem, known as E-1, unnecessarily provokes Europeans. Also, while Mr. Netanyahu condemns Jewish violence in Judea and Samaria, his opponents will likely be more aggressive in stopping attackers of Arabs there. In any event, as Mideast animosity is bound to persist, any Israeli leader would hit back hard. Won’t haters then find someone new to kick around?

What Will the Left Do If Bibi Loses?

What Will the Left Do If Bibi Loses?

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